Jay Rockefeller: “It is simply an example of why it is that America--why intelligence is the spear, the tip of the spear, and that we…”

“It is simply an example of why it is that America--why intelligence is the spear, the tip of the spear, and that we never do anything ever again without listening to our intelligence--not to Chalabi, not to Richard Perle, but to our intelligence--which told us all of these things, which told us what would happen, timidly at first but more boldly later on. We just live in a different world. We are homesteaders. I have always felt that way. After the industrial revolution, the East got sort of flooded up with folks who had come from other places, and they went out West with the Gold Rush and the land rush, they got their 10 square acres and built their houses and picket fences and went about educating their children and doing good things but paying very little attention to the rest of the world because there was no apparent reason to do so. We had never been attacked since 1812, and that was marginal, and 1941 had not arrived. This awakened us in many ways, but, in fact, it really didn't. Conscription for World War II passed the Congress, I believe--or one House of the Congress--I believe by one vote, after Pearl Harbor. We go over and we fight just wars, and then we come back and we disarm. It is not in our nature to know about the rest of the world.…”